How to permanently delete your Facebook account

“According to a report by Jennifer Goldbeck written for Slate, Facebook [keeps] tabs on when people enter text in the Facebook browser interface and then choose to not share it (a practice the company terms ‘self censorship’),” Christopher Breen reports for Macworld. “However—again according to the Slate article—the company doesn’t collect the text you type, only when you fail to share it.:

“If this specific behavior creeps you out you might instead choose to compose your Facebook messages in a text editor. When you’re sure that you want to share them, paste that text into your browser and post,” Breen reports. “That will prevent the service from tracking aborted messages. However, if this is a ‘last straw’ kind of decision, read on.”

“I left Facebook nearly four years ago because of its casual attitude toward its users’ privacy and nothing I’ve seen since has convinced me that this was a mistake. So, I sympathize,” Breen reports. “Fortunately, it’s easy to leave.”

I am so glad I never joined Facebook. The peer pressure was a little strong at some points. My wife is on it, and would regularly tell me of old friends of ours she’d found on it. But though I came close, I never pulled the trigger and now I am so damned glad of that.

I joined a long time ago just to see what was going on. I didn’t get it I guess, and never used it except to make it faster & easier to join a few web sites. But then one day I noticed that my full name was being displayed, and I certainly NEVER gave them that. So I got out… I think. I had to email them to ASK to be deleted, and they said it would take effect in a couple of weeks. That was a month or 2 ago, and I can only assume I’m history with them now.

If you want to really want to discover old friends, pick up the phone or write a sincere hand-written letter.

Educate the gullible FB addicts around you — it’s just not worth it to support such corporate snooping. You aren’t benefiting.

Grocery stores were amongst the first to bribe users into having all their purchases tracked. But Google and Facebook and hundreds of other ad agencies and data thieves have taken their deceptive user datamining to a whole new level — and they don’t bother giving users any compensation in exchange for all their data.

As nasty as the NSA is, it actually might be reigned in when voters put into office some responsible representatives. Google and Facebook, on the other hand, really don’t respect the intent of any nation’s laws. Since corporations have wriggled their way into legal “personhood” in many nations, they can get away with any online behaviour they wish, no matter how disgusting. And if regulation ever did catch up with them, multinational companies simply relocate to continue doing whatever they want to do. Until democratic societies reclaim privacy as a right for PEOPLE, and properly restrict multinational corporations from egregious flagrant damaging brainwashing & profiteering data thievery, it will only get worse. Challenge your real friends to drop FB and implement some intelligent tracker blocking into their online lives.

I joined and use it every day to see what lunch specials all of the local restaurants are having. Other than that, I have no “friends,” and don’t post anything (other than a profile picture). It’s really useful for my purpose.

I’m kind of surprised by all the Facebook hate here. Just don’t provide personal information. All Facebook has from me is my name. No address, no DOB, none of the other “about” info.
I find it a convenient way to share info with friends, post a few pics now and again, etc. I’m very careful about who I “friend”, meaning it is only people I truly consider friends. Plus I occasionally review the privacy settings.
If you stay on top of the privacy settings, are careful about who you friend, and don’t provide all your personal info, you shouldn’t have any issues.

Don’t worry, FB and all of its marketing customers have already figured out exactly who you are, where you live, what you eat, what you drive, where you tend to shop, where you are at any given time, etc.

FB can predict much of your behavior even before you act on it yourself. The profiling is sickeningly powerful. Don’t assume that just because you didn’t offer a piece of data to FB that they haven’t pieced it all together.